Sing Your Life

The last week of Christmas vacation is upon us, which means it's time to compile my faculty activity survey for calendar year 2007 - otherwise known as the old merit pay application. Unlike the average asshat, I have never resented having to walk right up to the microphone: I have always put in at least as much as I have taken out. It looks like 2007 has been one more year I have staved off the descent into asshattery. Even so, I'm already starting to get angry about the likeliness of getting hosed out of merit pay in order to keep the looters somewhat mollified.

I have to admit that contrary to my expectations, I did pretty well on the old merit pay for calendar year 2006. Not only did I catch up somewhat on the asshats and other looters, the departmental merit process was far less acrimonious than it apparently was elsewhere on campus. For this I credit the department head and, to a lesser extent, the personnel committee chair. God knows I was expecting World War Three. The most important factor, however, was that the merit pay wasn't allocated in integers. That is, faculty were assigned an integer from 1 to 5 for teaching, for research, and for service - but the "final scores" were assigned on the plus/minus system. Instead of the 15% "5s," 35% "4's" and 48% "3's" forecast by the planning document, faculty could receive a 5, or a 4+, or a 4, or a 4-, or a 3+... and so on. More gradations in the final scores allowed finer differentiation in merit pay. An elaborate quartile system was built in to ensure "equity," but on this count I have to point out that certain people are in the lowest quartile because they deserve to be in the lowest quartile.

My concern is that the looters have had a year to figure out how it can finagle the new system. Finagling the system to get their "fair share" is what they do best: they consider inventing released time boondoggles and importunate pleas for equity adjustments far more gratifying than developing new curriculum or, heaven forbid, learning something scholarly and new. I predict an onslaught of minor syllabus tweaks and bogus committee service, all painstakingly documented but amounting to less than zero. The process will have greater urgency this year if merit pay is (as I suspect) to be allocated by integers this time, and not fractions.

My department has a bad habit of not calling looters out on crap like this. Last year I played nice like everybody else apparently did, even the asshats. Not this time. It's not a matter of the money, either. I make enough money. Sure, I wouldn't mind making more money. But money isn't why I got into academia. If I find myself locked into the same integer with the asshats and the rest of the looters, there will be hell to pay. But first I have to make sure that I have exercised due diligence by providing an accurate assessment of what they're up to when they sing their lives. We'll find out what happens with that.

These Things Take Time

One promising - literally - initiative on this campus is the "Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning." It sounds like a wonderful thing. Provided, of course, that it can be located. Although the "Faculty Center" has been described as a "virtual center," the closest virtual resource center I could find was the Academic Development Resource Room. While other University documents - such as the Provost's page on SoTL,- reference the "Faculty Center" and/or its Fellows,"a full list of the Fellows is nowhere to be found on the University website. Evidence of the "Faculty Center's" effects on the quality of teaching is likewise absent to date.

I'm not faulting the Central Administration on this. The Associate Provost for General Education and the Assistant Provost for the Extended Campus are extremely busy people and, I suspect, have a good handle on what needs to be done. I understand these things take time. I'm not personally looking for the cavalry. Nor am I in any big hurry. Nothing's going majorly wrong in my classroom. Whatever can be improved upon will be tweaked appropriately. I don't need any help - at least not from the usual Carnegie/SoTL suspects - in designing my new class for the upcoming semester. If I cared about studying Educational Design or Motivational Student Psychology, I would have done it as an undergraduate. As with the dear old Showcase, the language that they constantly prate says nothing to me about my life.

What would I like to see at a "Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning?"For one thing, spaces - both physical and virtual - where faculty members can talk about teaching without necessarily feeling compelled to label their conversation as the almighty "Scholarship of Teaching and Learning." In the late 1990s I participated in an impromptu discussion group with faculty from four different colleges. I went primarily because I enjoyed meeting with colleagues and sharing experiences with them. The benefits I obtained over the two years I attended the group were substantial - but secondary. I think a sense of community can be built among faculty, but not if it is forced on faculty as a mandate.

I would also like to see the "Faculty Center" led by a real, live, practicing teacher. Not by a staff member, no matter how capable. Not by one of those semi-administrative looters who routinely cadge released time for dressing in nice clothes and going to meetings. Not by one of those armchair theoreticians who publish reams but can't teach their way out of a paper bag. Not by one of those hothouse flowers who hasn't taught undergraduates in more than a decade. Of course, most (if not all) of the real, live, practicing teachers I would have in mind would run screaming from an administrative job - especially one that would take them out of the classroom. I can't even imagine the patience required to sit through the endless meetings with people dressed in nice clothes. But maybe one of them could be talked into taking one for the proverbial team.